The Media World: A New Collaboration Was Born

MeCCSA and AMPE Joint Annual Conference. 5- 7 January 2005, University of Lincoln A report by Serena Formica, University of Nottingham, UK

There was much anticipation and expectation leading up to the 2005 MeCCSA conference at the University of Lincoln. This was due to the event being the first joint MeCCSA (Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association) and AMPE (Association of Media Practice Educators) conference. The purpose of this union was to highlight the common features of both organisations, such as interest in media, Cultural Studies, pedagogy -- all of them reflected in the numerous panels throughout the three-day meeting.

Plenary sessions interspersed the many panels, the first of which was presented by Ursula Maier-Rabler (Director of the Centre for Advanced Studies and Research in Information and Communication Technologies and Society, University of Salzburg), who presented a paper entitled "Why do ICTs Matter? The Cultural-Social Milieu as Invisible Underpinning of New Information and Communication Technologies". Dr. Maier-Rabler highlighted the increasing importance of ICTs, considered as a Digital Network, characterised by its universality and non-linearity of contents. As Paul Virilio pointed out, ICTs are permeated by a constant acceleration, which emphasises its element of 'unfinishedness'. The cultural milieu surrounding ICTs was presented as divided into four major social-geographical areas: Social- conservative, Social-democratic, Protestant-liberal and Liberal-conservative. Maier-Rabler observed that the former belong to a collective form of State, whereas the latter belong to a form that is more individualistic. Furthermore, Dr. Maier-Rabler analysed ICTs' perspectives in terms of communication and infrastructure -- media (defined by a shift from programmes to services, media systems to infrastructure and recipient to users) and network (at a technical and social level). The passage from know-how, paramount at the beginning of ICTs, to know- 'who' (intended as the importance of knowing the people who know how to do), was underlined as a conclusion to the paper.

The presence of a large variety of delegates (professors, professionals, post-graduate students, experts), lead to a heterogeneous set of panels, each divided into the presentation of three related papers, gathered under a comprehensive title. The -- at times weak connection among the different papers represents the only negative aspect that I feel could be addressed by the conference organisers in the future.

The program of the first day consisted of the panels: Media Institutions and Policy 1 & 2, Approaches to the Cultural Industries, Investigating Transnational Media, E-Learning and Digital Technologies, Women and the Written Word, Investigating the E-Society, Culture and Identities, Actual Audiences, Teaching Film, Television and Radio, Regenerations: New Approaches in Feminist Cultural Studies and MeCCSA Women Studies Network Event: Showcasing Women: Screenings. The panels of the second day concerned the following areas: Alternative Media, News Work, Media and Welsh Identity, Audiences and Fandom, Learning and Teaching, Production, Consumption and gender, Looking to and at Europe, Question of Representations 1 & 2, Controversial images, Television Studies, Teaching Media Practice, MeCCSA Postgraduate Network event: Women: History/Representation/Technology and Showcasing Women, Neil McKay Screening, Democracy and New Media, Global Media Flows, Investigating Film, Enterprise.

The final day panels were: Media and Democracy Revisited, Mediating Minds and Mental Illness, Radio, Popular Music and Sound, Digital Screens/ questions of class, Film Practice as Research, Authorship, production creativity.

Such a variety of interesting topics enhances the regret for not attending a larger number of panels, due to the simultaneity of their presentation. Furthermore, limitations of space render this report confined to an overview of those papers and debates of particular significance or interest.

"Investigating Transnational Media" was one of the first panels of the conference. In the first paper presented on this topic, Dr. Olga Guedes Bailey, (School of Media, Critical and Creative Arts, Liverpool John Moores University) discussed the issue of "Diaspora and Transnational Media". Dr. Guedes Bailey explored the relationship between Latin American communities in Liverpool and the media network. The methodology used was a combination of interviews, textual analysis and observation in the space of the home. A key word within the research was the expression 'Latinidade', viewed as the belonging to a defined community, which is recreated -- on a smallest scale -- in the abroad environment of Liverpool. The Latin American community in Liverpool is a hybrid, its diversity due to the varying circumstances of the community -- be it as asylum seekers or refugees to those seeking business opportunities. After presenting the cultural context in which the research took place, Dr. Bailey passed to an analysis of the use and perception of media amongst this community. On one hand she stressed the invisibility of Latin American people within the British media; on the other she denounced the stereotypical image of Latinos presented by those media. The youngsters often are not interested in knowing what is happening in their original countries, but at the same time they are the ones who keep in touch with their home via a Diaspora media such as the Internet.

During the afternoon, I attended the session dedicated to Teaching Film, Television and Radio. At the beginning of her presentation on "Teaching Television", Dr. Karen Lury (Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies, University of Glasgow) pointed out, with notable sadness, how students prefer and respect Film Studies over Television Studies. Nonetheless she stressed the importance of the latter, testified by the recent publication of a significant number of books, such as Routledge's Introduction to Television Studies (2004), by Jonathan Bignell, or The Television Studies Reader, (2003) by Annett Hill and Robert C. Allen. The paper underlined the tendency of being obsessed by certain texts, such as the Big Brother phenomenon or the X-Files, and raised the question of how we may encourage students to look at other television forms. Television Studies is relevant in its relation to Film Studies, but at the same time it is important to stress perhaps obviously, the differences between television and film forms, especially from the aesthetic point of view. Another issue raised was to what extent the context of teaching affects the understanding and presentation of the television in Television Studies. The aim of the paper, rather than offering ready made answers to those questions, was to encourage debate, which was short but passionate. The second day of the conference provided a session dedicated to "Audiences and Fandom". Tony Sullivan (Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College) opened up discussion about consuming brands (his research covered a study on Essex Boys and Girls). Dr. Andy Ruddock, (Media and Cultural Studies, Liverpool John Moores University) presented a paper which explored the issue of racism conveyed by West Ham fans, and how ordinary football fans, who genuinely love the game, cope with such a matter.

Prof. Martin Barker from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, presented a paper entitled "The Lord of the Rings international audience project: some key findings". The research investigated the audience response to the movie and the role of film fantasy in the lives of international audiences (from 20 countries). The research methodology was a questionnaire in eleven different languages, which was completed by more than 20,000 people. The research has highlighted the different types of engagement with the characters of the film, from rejection to total identification, and has investigated the importance of the trilogy as an 'event' in people's lives. Some of the interviewed talked about The Lord of the Rings representing for them a sort of "second education" -- a phenomenon that could not have been possible without the simultaneous presence of the book. Others considered the vision of The Lord of the Rings as a spiritual journey. Finally Prof. Barker underlined the phenomenon of multiple viewings: people who watched the film several times, each time trying to forget their previous experience. Not all of those questioned enjoyed the film, nevertheless the research highlighted once more the massive impact that The Lord of Rings has had -- and continues to have thanks to the DVDs -- on the public.

In the final day of the conference I attended a session entitled "Authorship, Production, Creativity", in which were presented only two papers: "Gender, creativity and short film", by the screenwriter Eileen Elsey (University of West of England) and "Authorship and the American Television Writer-Producer: A case study of Joss Whedon", by Prof. Roberta Pearson (University of Nottingham). The former discussed whether or not female filmmakers have a different approach in making movies, in comparison to the dominant male-led directors. The latter highlighted the importance of Television Studies in the panorama of Media and Film studies, stressing how the question of authorship is as valid a concept for Television as Film studies. Television Studies, Pearson noted, has long been dismissed within the academy, only to be recently reconsidered. Television Studies, in many ways, is replicating the journey of Film Studies, but, unlike the latter, it has not yet developed a general theory-sustained debate on the question of authorship. Indeed, according to Prof. Pearson, an important issue to consider is how the analysis of auteurism in Film studies may be applied to television.

The paper aimed to fill this gap, thorough the case study of Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The paper analysed the function of the author with reference to the work of Foucault. Pearson also explored the relationship between the dimension of the audience and the willingness of the studios to take risks with the production (the greater the audience and the prestige, the greater the risk), the relationship amongst various people involved in the production and the balance of their power within the production itself; and the interaction between the author and the text.

The first Joint MeCCSA -- AMPE conference has been an important occasion to explore an overview of the status of academic research on the media. The collaboration between these two organisations can only enhance the profile of Media and Cultural studies. Therefore the wish is to have further opportunities to enjoy the outcomes of this successful -- even though occasional -- partnership. Soap gets in your eyes: nostalgia and the raising of the BBC's flagship?

EastEnders 20th Anniversary: Inventing the Modern Soap Conference. 19 February 2005, University of Westminster, London. A report by Charles Jason Lee, St Martin's, Lancaster

As one of the handouts for this historic day put it, EastEnders' first broadcast on the 19th of February 1985 represented a change in the BBC's thinking about public service broadcasting. It arrived at a time when the BBC was losing audiences to ITV and was accused of being elitist. The day was organised by the Communication and Media Research Institute of the University of Westminster and BBC Heritage, as part of the work for 'The BBC Under Siege', the next volume of the official history of the Corporation. The history, covering the years 1979 to 1987, was commissioned by the BBC and Oxford University Press, but is independent, (so the handout claims) funded by the AHRB, conducted from the University of Westminster and led by Professor Jean Seaton. The speakers consisted of significant figures in academia and the media: John Yorke, who returned to the BBC in January 2005, to take up the position of Controller of Continuing Drama Series and Head of Independent Drama; the director Antonia Bird; the author and journalist Rupert Smith; Jonathan Powell, who was Director of Drama a and International Development at Carlton Television until 2004; and the well-known academic, Professor Christine Geraghty, head of Film and Media at the University of Glasgow, amongst others roles.

The day was split in the following fashion: a fascinating session led by the makers of the programme entitled 'Making EastEnders Happen' which detailed the origins of the series; 'Exploring EastEnders' which consisted of two academic papers; 'Doing EastEnders', with the makers focusing on the early years of the soap; then a special session entitled, 'Launching the Public Service Soap- Teenage Pregnancy, Publicity and Social Action'. This final panel was followed by a 'round up' session and a chance to discuss conclusions gathered from the day, both of which were led by Professor Jean Seaton.

Being a film scholar and having researched and taught the work of Alfred Hitchcock frequently over the years, I was bowled over to hear from Jonathan Powell that the origin of the EastEnders' format came from watching Hitchcock's Rear Window. The whole idea of Albert Square, with the characters and audience voyeuristically observing with unnatural interest the movements of all of its inhabitants, stemmed from Powell's viewing of this seminal film. I went to the conference with an innate academic streak in me wanting to throw a few fireworks: what about the dodgy scripts, the clichéd representation of 'others', the frequent lack of realism and the generally tedious nature of 'Pauline'? What it turned into was in many respects a big love for EastEnders.

We learnt that EastEnders achieved a number of firsts. It was the first programme where detailed quantitative and qualitative audience research went into the foundation of the show. A crucial aspect was locating the series in London, as potential audiences felt that Londoners were supportive of each other, were sincere and traditionally displayed neighbourly spirit. Importantly, concerning the crucial part of marketing and public relations, it was the first programme of its kind to have its very own publicist -- dedicated to all things EastEnders. According to its makers, part of what made it so radical at the time was the manner in which the soap functioned almost as an independent production. This, arguably, gave EastEnders its 'rough edge', with some of the earlier episodes being truly groundbreaking.

With far ranging references to nineteenth century art and sociology, and a clip of 'Kat Slater' and the moon, Christine Geraghty's enjoyable academic paper pointed to an arguable shift in the aesthetics of the show, from realism to melodrama, with its black and white villains, which perhaps marked a downturn in the content. Whatever we think about the way EastEnders has tackled important issues over the years, we need to remember it was on at seven in the evening and for many families it was the family fire, the only point of contact. What was fascinating about the conference was how it re-engaged you with the mood of the nation at the time. In its early days, EastEnders was Britain; you could not escape it.

The writer Bill Lyons pointed out that those behind the programme were concerned with the politics of the nation. The issues dealt with were deliberately ones that people cared about, with there being an attempt to create narratives of hope and characters who were survivors. This may be viewed today as deeply ironic, as EastEnders gained the reputation for being the most depressing and grim of the soaps. As a teacher of both film and creative writing I was thankful for John Yorke's detailed explanation of aspects of the writing: it revolves around a strong matriarchal culture and involves the female spirit; it must involve the overcoming of an ordeal; like all good writing, it must focus on the detail; it must be character led; it in essence involves playing with the status of the characters; to be plot led was 'stupid' (which was, perhaps, his way of pointing out how things had recently gone wrong in his absence); it must be led by writers; there must be love for the characters; and nobody does something because they are horrible. Yorke made the interesting point that almost every plot line is checked by The Samaritans or other relevant organisations that may otherwise hold the programme responsible for potential responsive actions perpetrated by viewers. This illustrated the importance and influence of EastEnders to the audience and the intense difficulties that present themselves in making the show. Just how much EastEnders is part of public service broadcasting can be ascertained from this -- that someone somewhere is always holding it accountable.

Wider comparisons with Brookside and other soaps would have been interesting, but the main focus of the day was to let the makers reminisce so that this could be recorded. Every aspect of the day was filmed, from the papers and discussion to the questions and responses. One of the most entertaining slots was by publicist Cheryl-Anne Wilson, who spoke of the viciousness of the press, and how, with the exponential rise in celebrity culture, this has advanced over the last twenty years. One example she gave was how four journalists posed as medical staff and tried to gain access to 'Dirty Den's' real life wife while she was having a baby. Wilson summed up the problem for working as a publicist for the BBC quite aptly, "you just were not allowed to tell people to piss off". Of course, all drama is about concealing secrets to the last minute. Trying to keep the press at bay while simultaneously using them for your own advantage is a difficult skill. Amazingly newspaper editors, Wilson pointed out, were told to find a story to print on a regular basis about EastEnders. They therefore had to make up such classics as 'Den goes gay'. Stolen scripts were purchased and stars of the programme getting into fights outside a night-club made the front pages, while major international news such as the devastating Mexican earthquake, was buried away to insignificant back pages.

Overall, the day was superbly run and I must thank the organisers, among them Dr Anthony McNicholas for their contribution. It is de rigueur to throw in a criticism at the last minute. Despite coincidentally meeting 'Bianca' in a café in Brighton the following day, it would have been good to have had an actor from the early days to give us their side, or a hack journalist. I suggested this to one of the organisers from BBC Heritage but was told that this would change the nature of the day, as they would probably have wanted money. Given 'Nick Cotton' is one of the greatest creations in twentieth century television this was a flaw. But, then again, I've always got UK Gold… Listening to the Image

The School of Sound Conference. 30 March - 2 April 2005, South Bank Centre, London A report by Roy Perkins, Southampton Institute, UK

This was the sixth School of Sound, run by Larry Sider, Head of Post Production at the National Film and Television School, and Diane Freeman, formerly Deputy Chief Executive of PACT (Producers' Alliance for Cinema & Television). 'SoS', as it has become known, is now the most influential gathering of practitioners, writers and academics in the field of sound design. Though described as 'a unique symposium exploring the art of sound with the moving image', this event has expanded to include sound installations, theatre, radio and new digital media. Its industrial and cultural significance is reflected in the support given by Channel Four, Film London, Skillset and Dolby, as well as the Canadian High Commission, the Institut Français and the Goethe-Institut. Part of what makes this conference so stimulating is the high level of international participation, which brought delegates from over thirty countries, including a liberal sprinkling of film editing and sound design students from Germany, Scandinavia and the UK.

The event's reputation attracts prestigious speakers. In previous years feature film editor Walter Murch, directors David Lynch and Mike Hodges, academics and writers Peter Wollen, Tom Paulin and Laura Mulvey, have all contributed, as well as artists and practitioners whose work covers the entire audio-visual spectrum. The difficulty of organising an event structured around contributions from leading filmmakers however, is that their schedules may be subject to last minute changes. Oscar-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker was expected to make a presentation this year, but was replaced at the last minute by American re-recording mixer Tom Fleischman, another of Scorsese's regular collaborators. The voice of the practitioner is generally absent from film studies symposia, which reflects a continuing tension between film theory and film practice. When filmmakers do appear at academic conferences, their presence can be inconvenient (see Mikel J. Koven's Scope report on the Wicker Man conference, 'Keeping the Appointment', where Robin Hardy's forthright rejection of certain delegates' readings of his film turned the director into something of a straw man -- useful, according to Koven, only insofar as his 'voice could be discounted'). What is refreshing and distinctive about the SoS conference is the practitioners' analysis of their own and their colleagues' work, augmented by contributions from academics -- nearly all of whom are themselves engaged at some level in producing audio-visual work.

The quality of presentations over a packed four days was extremely high, energised by the enthusiasm of delegates and speakers who shared a common mission: the promotion of sound design as a vital but under-acknowledged creative process. The selection of speakers attests to Larry Sider's instincts about choosing those specialists able to give a structured presentation without succumbing to the asides and anecdotes that often characterise -- but may fail to illuminate -- the visiting practitioner's lecture. But whereas it is true that sound has often been the poor relation in drama and documentary film production, (the bit that's left to the end of postproduction and therefore a victim of other departments' budget overruns), the widening awareness of its expressive potential is in no small part due to the teaching, writing and professional practice of the delegates who have attended these SoS conferences.

Radio producer Piers Plowright's opening presentation (his sixth at this event) explored the acoustic space that radio creates and fills, and reminded us that the word, rather than technique, is the heartbeat of radio. His examples included a piece by an ex-student at Dartington College, which Plowright described as "dance for the ears", created by cross- cutting two separately recorded elderly interviewees, and looping poignant childhood memories of the 1930s and 40s. He concluded with a nostalgic spot from Hancock's Half- Hour, as a way of illustrating the proper integration of live studio audience laughter.

Due to illness, Michel Chion's presentation was given by his colleague Gustavo Costantini (University of Buenos Aires), a regular contributor to the journal Filmwaves. The detailed analysis of the relationship between image and sound in Fritz Lang's M and Hitchcock's The Birds, identified them as sonically enhanced silent films which resisted using sound merely as literal illustration. In discussing The Birds, Costantini emphasised the contribution made by Hitchcock's 'dream team' -- composer Bernard Herrmann and film editor George Tomasini -- to this and other of the director's later films. A deconstruction of the Bodega Bay schoolroom scene argued that its original conception was modified during postproduction, where the use of the children's song was built up, creating an analogy between the 'unbearable repetition' of the verses and the crows silently massing behind Tippi Hedren.

Michael Chanan (University of the West of England) noted the resurgence of cinema documentary, possibly in response to the encroachment of 'reality' television, and illustrated his own minimalist approach to documentary sound with extracts from his recent film on the industrial decline of Detroit. Chanan celebrated the creative freedom enjoyed by the self- sufficient digital filmmaker, able to dispense with the camera/sound crew, while admitting that some technical shortcomings might inevitably result.

A running theme of the conference -- that developments in digital technology were in danger of throttling creativity -- was argued by American sound designer Ren Klyce, who offered examples of creative sound innovation from the analogue era. He followed this with examples of his own work from Being John Malkovich, and described how he resolved the challenges of creating a sound perspective from inside the Malkovich character's head. Klyce, echoing Plowright and Costantini, argued that the goal should be to do more with less, despite the infinite number of tracks that can be generated for the digital sound mix. Composer Gabriel Yared (The English Patient, Cold Mountain) also maintained the creative benefits of working within constraints, inverting and adapting his musical phraseology within a single four-bar structure. He objected to the standard practice of bringing in the composer at the end of shooting, illustrating how his early involvement at the script stage of The Talented Mr Ripley enabled him to link his composition to an interpretation of the eponymous character's fragile and unstable personality.

Dr Kersten Glandien (University of Brighton) introduced composer/theatre director Heiner Goebbels and described his non-hierarchical approach of retaining and relinquishing authorship through encouraging improvisation and innovation from his radio-miked musician/performers. Filmed 'documents' illustrated Goebbels' collaborative approach, through which self-organised ensembles actively engaged with their audience in creating vital, multi-layered theatrical experiences. Two filmmakers whose work involves experimentation took part in a bilingual interview. Sound designer and lecturer Annabel Pangborn (National Film and Television School) introduced Joëlle Bouvier, an independent French filmmaker. Her richly-textured dance films, choreographed for camera, challenge the aural senses with sound tracks composited from effects and music in a way which forces the viewer to reconsider the imagery and its possible meanings. Pangborn followed this interview with a revealing analysis of her own experimental work in shorts and animation, and offered graphic illustrations of the power of cinema sound, using extracts from Atom Egoyan's Exotica.

Tom Fleischman, a recipient of four Oscar nominations, showed examples of his work with Jonathan Demme and Martin Scorsese, including a ten-minute extract from Goodfellas that took him a week to mix, due partly to complexity arising from Scorsese's preference for the painstaking placement of source music against picture, and also to late alterations to the structure of the sequence. Fleischman noted that digital technology can now readily accommodate late changes requested during the mix, whereas previously the intractability of analogue sound dubbing acted as a deterrent. His self-deprecating style of presentation belied the intensive and exacting skill that goes into creating the complex soundtrack -- often mixed by him alone -- for films such as Silence of the Lambs. Each extract on screen was a reminder that the contribution of sound editors and dubbing mixers is, often unconsciously, an indispensable part of the audience's viewing experience.

The final day of the conference provided the high point, primarily for the specially-recorded video interview with legendary American film editor Dede Allen, presented by Larry Sider and film editors Mick Audsley and Jo-Ann Kaplan. Sider reminded us that Allen's prowess as a storyteller, her ability to mix tenses, and the freshness of her subtle manipulations of picture and sound which still inspire editing students to study her films. Allen underlined how important it was for an editor to understand both character and the three-act story structure, which she doubted was often the case with the generation of film directors emerging from MTV, and talked about the impact of sound and silence as a creative element, in extracts from Bonnie and Clyde, The Hustler and Little Big Man. Editor Mick Audsley, Stephen Frears' regular collaborator, described the value he attaches to the colour and life of original synch (speech, room acoustics and movement), choosing to re-dub only where unavoidable. Audsley also reminded delegates that although picture is senior to sound in the postproduction hierarchy, his relationship with sound editors was 'symbiotic'. The conference displayed little nostalgia for the days of analogue sound editing on film. Mick Audsley recalled the disadvantages of cutting sound on the venerable but daunting Moviola (very noisy, only able to accommodate one track at a time), but he did consider his work to be far more demanding now, due to the increased number of screens and voices prevalent in the digital editing environment.

Director Chris Petit discussed the production of his road-movie Radio On, and its subsequent re-mix. His presentation was in part a homage to German cinema, to the music of Kraftwerk, and to cameraman Martin Schaeffer, who photographed Radio On. Petit reminded us that the special deal done with Kraftwerk, to supply three music tracks for a buy-out figure of £150, was now impossible with the corporatisation of music, and that filmmakers need to adopt other strategies -- in Petit's case working in partnership with musician Bruce Gilbert.

The final presentation was from director Lynne Ramsay and sound designer Paul Davies, whose collaborative work on Rat Catcher and Morvern Callar is highly innovative in its use of sound. Rat Catcher utilises natural sound within sound design elements, while Morvern Callar reversed the normal sequence of filmmaking by starting from a sound-mix rather than a script -- constructed by Paul Davies using the original novel as his reference.

In summarising, Diane Freeman emphasised that sound is primarily how we learn, and that it should be set free from 'the tyranny of the image'. The event concluded with a high-pitched bell ring that dissipated into the darkness, enveloping the three hundred delegates in the Purcell Room. Over the four days of the conference a number of overarching themes emerged. Sound needs to be discussed, celebrated and theorised in its own right, not just as a shadow illustration of the image, but as integrated sonic elements playing in concert and counterpoint. Despite the high level of interest in technology and the seductive facility of working digitally, for many delegates the imaginative sourcing and selective application of sound is preferable to the sonic ballast that characterises much Hollywood product. Tom Fleischman and Ren Klyce both noted the CYA ('cover your arse') approach now demanded of sound editors, designers and re-recording mixers, where every eventuality has to be anticipated during the final mix. Gustavo Costantini's plea that sound tracks should be full of ideas and not full of effects, best expressed the flavour of the conference.

As the School of Sound is held in the UK, I would hope that some of the distinguished British sound and picture editors, mixers and recordists (such as Doug Turner, Antony Gibbs, Mike Le-Mare) who now live and work elsewhere, can be persuaded to contribute to a future conference. The wide range of contributors' backgrounds at this School of Sound was proof that sound design is now firmly rooted in the experience and understanding of a range of artistic forms, and that within cinema the dynamic interactions of image and soundtracks are increasingly valued and understood. SCMS Goes Global

Society for Cinema & Media Studies, March 31 – April 3, 2005, Institute of Education, University of London, UK A report by Rayna Denison & Liza Palmer, University of Sussex, UK & University of North Carolina Wilmington, USA

For a discipline that has become so concerned with issues of globalization and internationalization, film and media studies -- as represented by the Society of Cinema & Media Studies (SCMS), the primary professional organization in this field -- has been heretofore constrained to the North American continent. But SCMS, which struggles annually to keep up with the rapidly changing world of conferences while still maintaining an affordable and accessible fee structure for all involved, finally managed to enter the world arena with its recent 2005 conference at the Institute of Education, University of London. Excitement at this determination to go global could be felt at every stage of the process, from the online forum for panel calls, to the submission of proposals (indeed, the notifications of acceptance were unexpectedly delayed until mid-December, owing to the unprecedented number of submissions SCMS received). One need only consult the tome of a conference program to note the ultimate popularity of this decision of SCMS to venture abroad.

Previous SCMS conferences have been held at hotel complexes, most notably the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia, for the 2004 conference; such an arrangement always served to facilitate the proceedings of the conference. Like one-stop shopping, you could lodge, eat, and participate all in one convenient site. With this in mind, the decision to host the London conference at a separate institution, and leave participants to the mercy of the lodging market of London, was perhaps unwise. Many attendees were scattered about the city, depending upon availability and affordability. And the lures of London certainly impacted audience attrition rates. But surprisingly, despite these complications, panel attendance was not visibly affected (even minor panels scheduled opposite scholarly powerhouses fared well, and were regularly standing room only). However, the usual camaraderie that distinguishes SCMS conferences was somewhat diminished. With no easy place to adjourn to catch up with old colleagues or network with new ones, the conference seemed less convivial and vital than in past years.

Consistently and across the board, panel presentations were in rare good form this year. As ever, it was an attendee's market, with many concurrent panels to choose from and very little time with which to work; on average, there were seventeen panels during every session. In addition, and when compared to past conferences, SCMS seemed to modify the program proper itself, discarding late afternoon panel slots in favour of plenary sessions. Consequently, the program felt more compressed and inhibiting. And there were the usual troubles with room assignments; Murphy's Law prevailed, as panels that were obviously expected to be less popular -- and, thus, assigned smaller spaces -- perversely turned out to be in high demand. One such panel was the workshop, "Publishing a Journal/Publishing in a Journal", which featured a dynamic line-up of speakers, including: Jon Lewis (Cinema Journal), Ann Martin (Film Quarterly), and Michael Tapper (Film International), amongst others. As one might suspect, the room was filled with scholars and graduate students hoping to glean the secret of getting published in the film and media studies field. In this author's experience, panels like these, designed with a graduate-student audience in mind, are always well attended. Indeed, the SCMS community would surely benefit from more of these practice-centred, nuts-and-bolts presentations -- particularly as the film and media studies market becomes increasingly competitive.

Inevitably, the myriad panels led not just to uneven attendance but to uneven divisions between the traditional and the trail blazing. Of the traditional approaches on offer, the panels on the national seemed most consistent. For example, the Contemporary Japanese Cinema panel, chaired by Akira Lippit (University of California, Irvine), offered much in the way of appraisals of the Japanese nation through its films, using semiotic and impressive high theory methodologies, but without the industrial and commercial analyses that Japanese cinema studies so badly requires. A similar structuring absence was to be found in the Animation and Nation panel chaired by Lora Mjolsness (University of California, Irvine) which, although it traversed continents with papers on online Siberian animation, the émigré impact on Australian animation and a study of the Britishness of Aardman Studios, never really connected these to either cinema and media studies generally, or to the global importance of animation. Best amongst these was the Australian animation paper by Dan Torre (RMIT University) and Lienors Torre (Victorian College of Arts), which plowed through a vast history of Australian animation before focusing on the importance of non-Australians to the success and longevity of that nation's animated films.

By comparison to these traditionally oriented panels were others striving to make inroads into forgotten, under-researched and new topics. Barbara Klinger's (Indiana University) "Karaoke Cinema" was one such paper, at pains to explain the pleasures of re-watching favourite films, and of quoting film dialogue (movie-oke to use her term). She proclaimed home cinema as a process of personalising the viewing experience, but also of enabling film cultures to take refuge in the domestic imagination. Through repetition and memorisation, new cultural capital sources are constructed encouraging the unending recycling of film texts in popular culture.

'Acting Cinematic: New Perspectives on Film Acting' was another broad ranging and exciting panel. It began with Cynthia Baron's (Bowling Green State University) re-thinking of the Prague School of Theatre Semiotics as a "Useful Framework for Analyzing Cinema and Screen Performance". In doing so, Baron showed just how much work remains to be done to bring together the remits and theories of performance and star studies. Following her paper were two other distinct yet focused analyses of particular star performances. The first by Tamar Jeffers McDonald (Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College) traced the acting styles of Rock Hudson across his melodramatic and comedic roles, noting how his physical movements change in each instance. This was followed by Paul McDonald's (Roehampton University) deconstruction of male and female stardom (using Kevin Spacey and Julia Roberts) showing the different seemingly gendered criteria the media and review cultures apply to star acting.

Finally in this panel, Pamela Robertson Wojcik (University of Notre Dame) dealt with "The Sound of Acting". She pointed to the technology of the cinema and its huge potential impact on the performances of actors, citing Andy Sirkis and digital performance. She argued that understanding the impact of recording technologies and postproduction processes on the finished film artefact are essential to any holistic approach to acting styles. This panel was important not only for its attempts to tie together different strands of theoretical argument, but also for the way it spoke to other significant panels at SCMS this year, such as ‘Women at Work on Screen’, which included papers on female stars, characters, stereotypes and acting by Cynthia Lucia (Rider University), Diane Negra (University of East Anglia), Yvonne Tasker (University of East Anglia) and Martha P. Nochimson.

Wojick's paper also tied into another significant strand within the SCMS this year -- sound.

Five panels, 'Film Sound: Technology, Perception', 'Aesthetics; Film Authorship and Film Music'; 'Hearing Things: Sound in Television, Radio, and New Media'; ''Inappropriate' Film Music and Film Sound: Aesthetics and Historical Content', all pointed towards a growing trend in appreciating the role of sound in the media -- in the case of the latter, specifically the roles of music in film. ''Inappropriate' Film Music', chaired by Kevin Donnelly (University of Wales), dealt with an interesting range of topics from the few errant notes of a melody heard in passing through to experimental pop music scores. Claudia Gorbman's (University of Washington, Tacoma) "Musical Crumbs" in particular opened up a space for debate about what counts as film music, scanning the frontiers of music, sound and dialogue for the meanings of these "musical" fragments.

A further panel of note was 'Television as a Cultural Technology' -- chaired by Norma Coates of the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater -- which featured several interesting case studies on international television history, both past and present. Mariana Johnson of New York University offered a fascinating account of the United States government-sponsored propaganda television channel, TV Martí, in her paper, "TV Martí from 30,000 Feet: Information Wars and Invisible Audiences". Intended and meticulously programmed for Cuba by Cuban exiles, TV Martí -- as Johnson pointed out -- has no actual audience; Cuba has successfully managed, for years, to block the signal. And yet TV Martí stubbornly persists, pursuing the elusive Cuban satellite-dish owners; it is, in fact, illegal to own dishes in Cuba. Showing clips from typical shows on TV Martí, Johnson demonstrated the "invisible audiences" that the station misguidingly supposes: rather than reach out to present-day Cubans, TV Martí reflects more the mindset of its out-of-touch programmers, caught in some nostalgic time warp, longing for a Cuba that has ceased to exist. So TV Martí remains an incredibly well-funded failure -- just another tax burden for U.S. citizens to bear.

Other standouts of this panel included Jason Jacobs and chair, Coates. Jacobs, from Griffith University, presented his paper, "How (not) to Sell Television to the World: The BBC Television Transcription Service in the 1950s". Perhaps the most engaging presenter, he effortlessly revealed the result of his countless hours of archival research, focusing on how the BBC tried to market its programming abroad in the 1950s despite numerous obstacles and contractual obligations. Like TV Martí, these first efforts of the BBC represent another interesting failure.

In her presentation entitled, "The British Invasion, Televised: The English Look of mid 1960s American Rock and Roll Television", Coates compared two musical-format television shows from the 1950s and 1960s -- "Oh Boy!" in the United Kingdom and its more unsuccessful cousin, "Shindig!" in the United States. Both shows were similar in structure, featuring live musical performances, and were produced by Jack Good. More of an intent to study at this point, Coates' presentation was nonetheless an intriguing initial inquiry into why the brainchild of Good and why his particular brand of music television, did not survive exportation to the American television market of the 1960s. It was interesting to note from the brief clips during her presentation the significant stylistic differences between the two shows, each rendering the televisual space in markedly varied ways. "Oh Boy!" seemed to define the space more sophisticatedly, using standard editing techniques, while "Shindig!" favoured a much more static, theatrical approach. Perhaps this is a further explanation for the relative success of the former when compared to the latter; such a consideration in Coates' future work on this topic would only serve to strengthen what is already a piece of merit.

A final panel of interest was 'The Cinematic Mind: Cognition and Film', chaired by Dale Cohen of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. This unique grouping of scholars featured two -- Cohen and Michael Kubovy of the University of Virginia -- who hold doctorates in and are professors of psychology. Consequently, the views on cognition posited during the panel were informed and illuminating, if only because they were introduced by researchers in the psychology field; such cross-pollinating opportunities at discipline-centred conferences, like SCMS, are certainly worthwhile. Indeed, in many ways, exposure to film and media studies-compatible theories and approaches, undiluted, can be more rewarding than the typical fare. This author would welcome similar experiences at SCMS in future, as it is an amenable way of revisiting contentious topics -- as well as broaching new ones.

In his presentation, "The Cinematic Mind", Cohen supplied a very concise, balanced, and prosaic comparative survey of the cognitive and semiotic perspectives of film study; would that such clarity could always be counted upon where cognition and semiotics are concerned. Todd Berliner, also of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, offered his paper, "The Construction of Film Space", which reviewed, among other things, analytical editing and how film viewers perceive and make sense of film space and film narratives. Of particular interest was the short piece by Heider and Simmel that Berliner screened for the audience. This film, originally made in 1944, depicts simple animated shapes moving across the frame and is a classic within the field of psychology for understanding and studying human cognition. Most humans, even when watching this almost primitive short, insist on imposing a narrative trajectory to the scene (i.e. the large triangle is "bullying" the smaller triangle and circle). Overall, Berliner's points about classical Hollywood style and its relation to cognition were well reasoned and supported. His argument however, would have been further fortified by an appreciation of the economic imperatives behind such stylistic decisions. Rounding out the panel was Kubovy with his "How Much of the Male Gaze is Genderless?", which queried Laura Mulvey's assertion of the male gaze in her seminal work, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema".

Murray Smith of the University of Kent, as respondent, provided the perfect cap to what was already an accomplished panel. By tempering his praise with criticism, and vice versa, Smith ably concluded that cognition, like most theories of film, is flawed when taken as gospel, but nonetheless instructive when considered in context. The panellists were graced with a sympathetic audience for the most part. Indeed, upon completion of the presentations, they inspired a convivial and engaged dialogue, which continued well into the following plenary session -- an assured sign of success at SCMS.

Ultimately, SCMS is to be congratulated for this bold move abroad -- London was the perfect first choice to ease us into the global arena without shocking our system. Such an enterprise could not have been easy to plan and support, especially given the relatively affordable and egalitarian registration rates that SCMS continues to maintain. But, all things considered, the conference was an indisputable success. One can only hope that SCMS will continue to challenge itself and its members with more exotic locales; indeed, going global is key to the strengthening of the film and media studies discipline, and of the scholars fortunate enough to represent it. On to Vancouver 2006! Bad Education

Pornography's Not About: On Pornography, Obscenity, & Spectacle, April 7-9, 2005, The University of Western Ontario A report by Gregory Brophy, UWO, Canada

"Pornography's Not About" marks the Seventh Annual Conference organized by Western's Departments of Comparative Literature, Spanish, and Theory & Criticism. The conference's title anticipated much of the scholarship presented here: an oblique phrase whose "not about" names some negative procedure, suggesting that pornography either cannot or should not be met "head on", and prescribing a method that would refract any direct gaze with a glance or glancing blow. If the academy were to recuperate pornography as an object of study, it would make sense that it should proceed as Orpheus had, averting his eye from Eurydice's gaze (even as she stares straight into the camera with the porn starlet' s frank solicitation). Or perhaps this "not about" names a prohibition set in place by pornography itself, its implicit mandate being exposure without revelation. Could it be that full disclosure leaves some enigma untouched, cleverly disguised right out in the open?

The conference opened with Leslie Barzca (Toronto), a composer and librettist whose recent work includes Venus in Furs, an opera based upon Sacher-Masoch's novel. However, the titular adaptation of Barzca's keynote address, "Lurid Adaptations: Between Fidelity and Cynicism", was Christopher Miles' 1970 film version of D.H. Lawrence's, The Virgin and the Gypsy. Adaptation, for Barzca, not only names this particular transition from literature to film, but is intended in its evolutionary sense as well. From literature as a language of implication to film's "fleshing out" of the same, Barzca expressed optimistically, the media of pornography are making steady progress in their march towards complete disclosure.

As such, Barzca's opening address introduced one prevailing attitude at the conference, understanding sexuality as a transgressive force that would break through the bounds of societal institutions, including academic "disciplines" scandalized by such supposedly unruly, taboo subjects. This particular narrative of progressive sexual enlightenment employed a hydraulic model of desire, figured for us in Lawrence's bursting dams, which flood the village with a natural force of sexual desire that will not be repressed culturally, but must "out" itself. Lloyd K. Keane's (Essex) paper on Aleister Crowley's poetry resituated this rhetoric of modernity in the context of its most familiar paradigm of sexual repression: the Victorians. Keane's argument found its clearest articulation in Crowley's The Law of Liberty, a poem that names the paradoxical imperative of sexual freedom: our duty as academics and as human subjects, the incitement to discourse. Over the next couple of days, these transgressive sentiments were bolstered by stories of personal experiences with the law, from the criminal cases recounted in James Miller's "The Dante Defence": Reflections on the Trials of Robin Sharpe and Little Sisters, to John Scythes' censorship struggle with Canada Customs at Glad Day Bookshop. Thursday's Art Panel Discussion also proved to be richly productive in its facilitation of discussion between local artists and curators.

Many presenters found creative ways of looking beyond the image, examining the conditions of representation that actively produce and structure our desire, rather than passively representing pleasure. One such study, presented by York University's Shana MacDonald, opened with a viewing of Carolee Schneemann's 1967 film Fuses. Her paper, "Reworking the Desirous Gaze: Self-Constructed Eros in Cinema", engages with Schneemann's work, but also serves as a methodological supplement to MacDonald's own work as a filmmaker (Self- Seeking Frenzy, 2004). Both MacDonald's articulate paper and her beautiful film set their sights on a "willed erotic subject" capable of resisting fetishistic reduction to the status of "sex object".

Expanding Laura Mulvey's examination of the male gaze in traditional cinema, MacDonald proposes the painterly hand-processing of film as an orthopaedics of the fragmented image, a non-photographic manipulation of cinema that creates a fourth dimension, or "fourth gaze", unmediated by the camera. In working directly with the filmstrip as tactile/ plastic form, MacDonald's "fourth gaze" finds its figure in the hand, not the eye (as Lear mumbles: "I see it feelingly"). Where optical perspective reinforces the schism between the viewer and the world s/he views, MacDonald's embodied (or haptic) gaze joins subject and object in physical union.

Anna Feigenbaum's "Niche Markets, or Nakkid Revolutions?" (McGill) pried behind Freud's conception of the fetish to find Marx's ob-scene, exposing the capitalistic base obscured by purportedly "alternative" pornography such as the pseudo-Goth Suicide Girls enterprise. For Feigenbaum, Suicide Girls' recent contract with Playboy serves as a striking reminder of the way in which "subcultures become niche markets", while the steadily decreasing remuneration provided to their models belies the corporation' s attendant alienation of labour. Any appeal to the "equity" of pornographic representation (the desire for all "types" of body- surfaces to be shown) must be informed by analysis of the conditions of the image's production, its politico-economic depth.

Michelle Carnes of American University presented an engaging paper entitled "Porno . . . Or Porno-chic?" This latter category of Carnes', potentially represents everything from the increasingly raunchy Jerry Springer circus to tasteful videos intended for the "romantic education" of married couples. For Carnes, what both popular representations of pornography hold in common is their tendency to capture not only the sexualized body, but also that of the viewing subject. Jerry Springer, for instance, binds the depravity of each chaotic television hour into a tidy narrative with a poignant moral, summed up in his "Final Thought". Similarly, the educational video typically presents us with a model couple who are learning, not lurking in some dark corner off-camera. The ambassadors of pseudo-porn are these idealized voyeurs, staged within the frame to help represent ourselves to ourselves. In this way, popular culture gives its viewers permission to look.

One of the conference's most challenging talks, "Russ Meyer Unbound Sexuality, Fetishism & the Study of Culture", was presented by Cristian Melchiorre (Western). Melchiorre opened with a careful critical assessment of cultural studies, explaining how the mass production of sexuality (Theodor Adorno), as well as its induction into discourse (Michel Foucault) amounts to sexual repression. Arguably, both thinkers would indict the academy, in its engagement with pornography, for its complicity in the normalizing enculturation of sexuality (and here we are not far from the pseudo-porn of Carnes' study). Melchiorre's own analysis of culture recuperates an earlier Freudian model of sexuality (citing Jean Laplanche) that understands the sexual drive as unbinding, rather than devoted to the "civilized" pleasure principle. Thus, Meyer's soft-core melodrama Vixen (1968) comes to serve as an illustration of Melchiorre's central contention that, while pornography is thoroughly normalising and fetishizing, something remains unbound. Cinematically, Melchiorre gives us an eroticized retelling of Andre Bazin's essay "The French Renoir", centring on the close-up of the face as the emblem of such unbinding, an enigmatic signifier that resists any simple symbolic incorporation of the other.

The final day of the conference featured two papers concerning animated pornography. In "Peek-a-boo, I see you: Watching Japanese hard-core Animation", Mariana Ortega (Western) identified hentai (the term means 'strange figures') Japanimation as an ideal site for exploring Vivian Sobchack's self-reflexive look. In their objectification of voyeuristic activity, these films call for a renegotiation of the gaze. While Ortega retains a privileged category for Japanimation, distinguishing the form from a Western "cartoon" history, Anthony Metivier's "Animated Bodies: Reflexivity and the Flesh" (York) makes a compelling case for a self- reflexive Western tradition. For Metivier, the eroticization of animation metaphorically expresses a human desire "to be inside the machine", always offset by the attendant anxiety that "numbers make the body mutable", that technology threatens to penetrate into the recesses of the subject, reconfiguring the humanistic terms of our own self-definition. For instance, we find such a technological concession in Hitchcock's Vertigo scenes, which require the use of a camera eye and body as surrogate for James Stewart, employing the machine to show us a vision of psychological depth inexpressible by a human actor. Metivier's choice of The Matrix (Wachowski Brothers, 1999) highlights a tendency within post-modern cinema to explicitly thematize this unsettling coupling of body and machine. There is, as Metivier observes, "a major correspondence between the narrative of the film and its construction", the bodies of both Keanu Reeves the actor and Neo the character being translated into the "movement data" of a geometrical language.

Taking advantage of a fortuitous coincidence, organizers brought attendees to "Blush", a local art show developed around a thematic sympathetic to the conference. This gesture extended conversation beyond the confines of the university, spilling out into the city (a rare occurrence in London, Ontario). To say that the weekend was suffused with sexuality would perhaps be misleading. But what one did find, both in and outside of formal academic discussions, was the curious way in which any discussion of pornography requires that we expose ourselves -- our need to have sex mean something to us, or perform something for us - - revealing all that we ask of desire.